Carlisle Castle Cumbria

Posted by admin as 14: Season Fourteen

Carlisle Castle is located in Cumbria in Northwest England, not too far from the border with Scotland. As such, it has a long violent history and has changed hands between the English and the Scottish many times through the years.

The castle has also been used as a prison and barracks for the military, its most famous prisoner being Mary, Queen of Scots in 1568. The military still use the castle today as headquarters to a Royal Regiment. There also remains a Scottish resident from long ago in the keep.

As Richard Jones tells the story…

“In the 1830’s during the construction of a parade ground and barracks, demolition work uncovered the skeleton of a lady bricked into one of the keep’s second-story walls. Three rings upon the boney digits of her fingers and remnants of her silk, tartan dress were evident. There were no clues to her identity, although there was considerable speculation that she may have been walled up alive. The opening of her tomb, however, appears to have roused her revenant, for in 1842 a sentry on guard duty in the keep challenged the figure of a woman who approached him in the early hours of one morning. As she ignored him, he shouted to rouse his fellow guardsmen. Then, raising his bayonet, he charged at the figure. Just as he reached her, the woman simply melted into thin air, whereupon the soldier fainted clean away. Although his comrades did manage to revive him, such was the shock to his system that, having told them what had happened, he promptly fell back and died.”

This ghost story was taken from the book “Haunted Castles of Britain and Ireland” by Richard Jones.